Time To Upgrade Old Dual Xeon CPU E5-2670

[cm.graz]

I've been using this system since about 2016:

Dual Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2670 0 @ 2.60GHz
Supermicro X9DRi-LN4+/X9DR3-LN4+ , Version REV:1.20A
64 GiB DDR3 Multi-bit ECC

It's worked quite well for my uses. Unraid OS running a couple of VMs, 10-20 dockers and some plugins.

Problem is, which I've ignored for the longest time. This thing SUCKS electricity. Depending on usage it lives 24/7 in the 250-350 watt range.

If I don't need something much more powerful, but simply looking for something more efficient, where would be a good place to start?

 

[nexox]

There are a lot of options, but to help narrow it down, tell us how important ECC, IPMI, rack mount form factor, and noise are, plus describe the storage you have or intend to use in the future.

 

[cm.graz]

• I can't say I know enough about error correction RAM to say it's important to me or not. I do have it now however.
• My current system has IPMI, but I never use it so not important.
• I have my current unit rack mounted which would be preferred, but not deal breaker.
• I don't care about noise, it goes in my utility/server room.
• Current setup is a 12 bay system which is likely adequate as I can upgrade disk size rather than disk bays.

I can see spending $1,000-$1,500 which I'm assuming would be able to put something quite a bit better together than what I have now.

And the last question would be is there any reasonable way to repurpose the old system, or if I'm looking to avoid the power sucking tendencies of the older dual xeons, then I'm out of luck?

 

[nexox]

The old system can probably fit v2 Xeons (or just one) and more efficient power supplies, fewer larger DIMMs, all of which are quite cheap, but in the end you still have an X9 system that's probably just too old to keep powered on. Perhaps just upgrade the power supply to something Platinum rated and install a new motherboard. Assuming it's a Supermicro chassis they tend to fit newer parts like PSUs and backplanes without too much work.

If you're willing to spend that much then you can likely get a relatively modern and efficient platform, maybe the Intel W680 chipset / LGA1700 socket, there's a pretty good thread on here about using those in servers, some CPUs will get you ECC support, IPMI is available, idle power is generally low, and available processing power in a single socket likely surpasses your current CPUs combined. A little less expensive would be something based on LGA1200, which uses DDR4, or probably something from AMD, but I know even less about their offerings than I do Intel's lower-power stuff.

 

[rtech]

How much CPU horsepower do you need?
Taking out one and upgrading to V2-Ivy Bridge CPU will lower power consumption to ~50w idle
see here:

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/move-from-dual-cpu-server-to-single-cpu-to-reduce-power-consumption.29448/

 

[i386]

Depending on usage it lives 24/7 in the 250-350 watt range.

Just the mainboard + cpus + ram?

 

[cm.graz]

Just the mainboard + cpus + ram?

And the hard drives. And now that I think about it, my switch is plugged into the UPS too but it's an unmanaged switch with negligible draw.

If I stop most Dockers and I'm only running my pfsense VM which is on 4 core 4 gig RAM, the server is around 150w

 

[Sean Ho]

Chassis sounds like an 826, which would fit any boards of normal form-factor (ATX, SSI-EEB, EE-ATX). If you don't care about ECC and IPMI, consumer 1151-2 boards are dirt cheap nowadays. Or consumer AM4, e.g., B550.

 

[zachj]

Ryzen can go up to 16 cores and 128gb of ecc ram going back several generations…if you want lowest power I’d say get a pro model ending with a “g” suffix; these have a unified die so they spend less power than the chiplet-based designs.

a ryzen 5750g would absolutely spank your current box.

hard to look past how cheap 12th gen intel core series is but you’ll have to decide how to deal with heterogeneous cores and support for ecc is confusing.

 

[rtech]

How many drives you have? consolidating these to fewer larger ones would help you to reduce power consumption.

 

[i386]

And the hard drives.

That's what I wanted to know
I think you will save some power by switching to a single socket system, but not a huge amount because the hdds probably cause most of your current power consumption.
(seagate exos x16 16tb consume at least 5watt (in idle), about 6.3watt for 4k io and up to 10w for large & sequential io. Source: https://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/datasheets/pdfs/exos-x16-DS2011-1-1904US-en_US.pdf)